Burnbrae Farms is one of three partners who have bought the largest egg farm in Vermont.
The 100,000-bird operation was built in 1996 by Lucien Breton of Aliments Breton, one of the largest diversified farming and processing companies in Quebec.
No price was disclosed; Breton spent $3 million in 1996, but was thwarted in attempts to expand to 500,000, then to 280,000. Neighbours objected to odours and flies.
Ted Hudson, vice-president of Burnbrae, told reporters in Vermont that he has no immediate plans to expand the farm. The other investors with Burnbrae are Ferme Hubert Inc. of Nicolet and Ferme A.B. Morin & Son of St. Bernard, both in Quebec.
Burnbrae is under investigation by the Competition Bureau in Canada after officials there learned of court files that include e-mail correspondence between Ted Hudson and Bill Gray of Grayridge.
Burnbrae and Grayridge own more than 90 per cent of the egg-grading business in Ontario, they both have dominant companies in Quebec and they have other significant operations in other provinces, including British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba.
Meanwhile, Nutri Oeuf of Quebec has confirmed that the deal between Ontario Pride Eggs, where it is 50 per cent owner with a group of Ontario egg producers, and Best Choice Eggs was not a merger, but a purchase.
“We purchased the assets,” Nutri Oeuf spokesman Richard Decelles confirmed in a telephone interview.
Svante Lind, who founded Best Choice Eggs, retains ownership of the grading station and equipment, but is out of the egg-grading business. He also owns Verified Eggs which is involved in certifying production of free-range eggs for customers such as Loblaws.
Lind is suing Burnbrae, Grayridge and the Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board, accusing them of conspiring to drive him out of the egg-grading business. The next court date is June 10 in Oshawa where one of the key battles is over electronic files that a whistleblower took from Gray and which are under court protection, pending the outcome of lawsuits to determine whether the files contain information that ought to be included as evidence in Lind's lawsuits.
Some of those documents in courthouses in London and Oshawa are e-mails among the three about how they could deal with Lind. There is also e-mail evidence that Bill Gray and Scott Brookshaw, his vice-president of operations, instructed staff to manipulate automatic egg-grading equipment to include cracks in retail-ready packs of Grade A eggs.
The egg board penalized Lind because his percentage of Grade A eggs fell short of the provincial average. The court documents include allegations that Gray's manipulation of grading defrauded consumers by about $25 to $30 million a year.
The Oshawa court documents allege that Burnbrae was doing the same things as Grayridge.
Lawyers for Grayridge and Burnbrae deny the allegations of wrongdoing.
Grayridge has also filed a number of contempt of court charges against Norman Bourdeau, the whistleblower who made the copies of Gray's electronic files that are at the centre of the lawsuits now. They will also come up at the June 10 court hearings.
At issue in the contempt charges is whether Bourdeau was wrong to turn over copies of some of the electronic information to others, including police and other authorities, such as the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission, the Farm Products Council of Canada and the Competition Bureau.
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